---
title: "U.S. Bans on Chinese Technology Push Robot Makers Into a Costly Supplier Hunt"
description: "Executives say American suppliers cannot yet match China’s prices or output, and some parts have no ready alternative."
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-03T04:11:53.132Z
modified: 2026-10-03T09:46:00Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/u-s-bans-on-chinese-technology-push-robot-makers-into-a-cost-6a6ae7
language: en
tags: ["automation", "china", "tariffs", "supply-chain", "robots", "tech", "business"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# U.S. Bans on Chinese Technology Push Robot Makers Into a Costly Supplier Hunt

*Executives say American suppliers cannot yet match China’s prices or output, and some parts have no ready alternative.*

By rews desk · October 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/u-s-bans-on-chinese-technology-push-robot-makers-into-a-cost-6a6ae7

## In brief

- The FCC expanded its restrictions in July to power inverters and advanced robotics; drone tariffs began in September
- Chef Robotics says it cannot find U.S. shops able to make the grippers now produced in China
- Kopin took more than two years to move display production home, at up to 25 percent higher cost
- Ghost Robotics’ magnets face a January ban because their raw material comes from China
- An Illinois professor says replacing Chinese humanoids could cost 10 times as much

The Trump administration’s widening restrictions on Chinese technology, extended this year to power inverters and advanced robots, are pushing American manufacturers into a slow and expensive hunt for parts that China makes cheaply and in vast quantities.

In July, the Federal Communications Commission added power inverters and sophisticated robotics — humanoid machines that can run, jump, dance and fight — to its list of restricted foreign-made equipment. The United States has also banned cars built with Chinese software, imposed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and added tariffs on drones that took effect in September, after a December ban on new drone models. This month Ford drew criticism from the administration over its use of Chinese electric-car batteries made by CATL; the automaker rejected claims it was ceding manufacturing to Chinese entities.

Few corners of technology feel the squeeze like robotics. Rajat Bhageria, who founded the startup Chef Robotics in San Francisco seven years ago, sells robot arms to food manufacturers that assemble ready-made meals. Final assembly is done in the United States, Mr. Bhageria said, but the plastic gripper utensils at the end of the arms are made in China. He tried to move that production last year as tariffs mounted and found it prohibitively expensive, with many suppliers outside China unable to fill his order. “We will even talk to some really good machine shops in the US and they’re like, ‘We can’t do this,’” he said. His parts are not yet covered by the bans, but investors and customers now ask him, “Why are you still using foreign-made parts?”

Ben Armstrong, the executive director of the Industrial Performance Center at MIT who researches manufacturing competitiveness and automation, said the deeper problem is know-how. “A lot of our digital lives are built on the infrastructure of foreign-made components and goods assembled abroad, and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” Mr. Armstrong said. “We just don’t know how to make them in the US. So, there will be a learning curve, and during that learning curve process, the price will be high.”

Michael Murray, the chief executive of Kopin Corporation, which makes optical components for drones used by the U.S. military, said relocating production of some micro display screens from China took the company more than two years and raised costs by as much as 25 percent, an expense offset by Defense Department funding. As sourcing rules tighten, more companies are seeking American-made parts, Mr. Murray said. Still, he said, China can produce more micro displays in one week than the United States produces in a year.

Gavin Kenneally, whose company Ghost Robotics builds robot dogs for industry and the military, faces a harder problem: China holds a near-monopoly on the rare earth metals behind his motors. Ghost has moved motor production from China to South Korea and buys its neodymium magnets from a European supplier, but the raw material still comes from China, which subjects it to a government ban that starts in January. “It’s an extremely difficult supply chain problem to solve in the short term,” Mr. Kenneally said. “In the long term, I think these bans have had the stimulative effect that the government had designed them to have.”

The stakes go past parts. “In the time that it takes an American company to build their first prototype, a Chinese company may already be on version three,” said Saman Farid, the founder of Formic, which supplies industrial robots to U.S. factories, and of Robots for America, an industry coalition. None of his customers have been hit yet, he said, but “if alternatives are not created fast enough, then it could be a real stumbling block for American businesses.”

Universities feel it, too. Sayan Mitra, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said several courses there run on Chinese robotic arms, drones, humanoids and vehicles. Replacing the Chinese humanoids with American ones could cost 10 times as much, he said, and for some drones there may be no alternative at all. “It’s like we are trying to do surgery on a patient that is already on their feet,” Mr. Mitra said. If restrictions arrive “in a very ad hoc, unpredictable way,” the effort to train roboticists and grow a domestic supply chain, he said, “can completely get derailed.”

Even household gadgets are in the net. The FCC’s ban on mobile robots covers new models of robotic vacuums, pool cleaners and lawn mowers, the vast majority of which are made in China, said Jitesh Ubrani, the director of consumer devices research at the technology intelligence firm IDC. Moving that production to the United States may be possible long-term, he said, “but that’ll probably be very expensive, and so the US consumers end up just paying a whole lot more.”